A widely used method of connecting a wire to a terminal is to form a wire-receiving slot in the terminal by punching the slot with a punch and die. The slot must, of course, be more narrow than the diameter of the wire to which the connection is made and a serious limitation on this type of wire connection is that it is impractical to form slots in terminals by punching which are significantly less than the thickness of the material or sheet metal from which the terminal is produced. This limitation has, in the past, precluded the use of wire-in-slot connections for wires having a diameter of less than about 0.33 mm. The stock metal from which the terminal is produced must be of some minimum thickness, as a practical matter, in order that it will be sufficiently rigid and sturdy to withstand its normal service and it is not practical to use metal stock having a thickness of much less than 0.33 mm in the manufacture of terminals. This means that the slots cannot have a width of much less than 0.33 mm. As a practical matter therefore, wire-in-slot type electrical connections are not used for AWG 32 wires and wires finer than AWG 32. An AWG 32 wire has a diameter of about 0.20 mm and the slot required for a wire having this diameter would need to be about 0.1 mm. As a practical matter, it is impossible to punch a slot having a width of about 0.1 mm in sheet metal having a thickness which is sufficient to be used in the manufacture of terminals.
The above-identified U.S. Application Ser. No. 704,458 describes in detail a terminal having a wire-receiving slot which does not require the punching operation as described above. The terminal comprises two plate-like members in parallel aligned relationship. The plate-like members have opposed internal surfaces and these internal surfaces are spaced apart in a wire-receiving portion of the terminal so the slot is in effect the gap or space between the opposed internal surfaces. The preferred method of manufacturing terminals of this type as described in Application Ser. No. 704,458 is to form a flat blank and then fold the blank to provide the two plate-like members in parallel aligned relationship.
The present invention is directed to the achievement of a terminal device as broadly described in Application Ser. No. 704,458 and the invention is particularly directed to the achievement of a terminal which can be manufactured by an alternative manufacturing method and which has certain advantages under some circumstances.